


More Clearly Ourselves

by PoliticalPadmé (magnetgirl)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Jedi Texts, Mortis (Star Wars), Movie: Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Skywalker Family Drama, Star Wars Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-10-29 23:44:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20804966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/pseuds/PoliticalPadm%C3%A9
Summary: A distraught Ben Solo seeks out his grandfather but misses the target.





	More Clearly Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yujacheong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujacheong/gifts).

> This loosely fulfills the prompt "Ben (or Kylo) has a very interesting encounter with the ghost of his namesake!" and to a much lesser extent "Grandfather isn't at all like Ben (or Kylo) thought he'd be!" (in that I explore his expectations of Obi-Wan as well as Anakin). I knew I wanted to play with time, and have Ben meet a prequels-era Anakin and/or Obi-Wan, but not break canon. I decided to base it in the concepts of Mortis and the void Ezra visits in "The World Between Worlds". I place Ben pre Kylo Ren but post Vader reveal and the destruction of Luke's Academy/Temple so Kylo Ren in spirit if not name. I hope it works for you. 
> 
> Title taken from the Lynn Hall quote: "We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves."

A tiny cloud of ash puffs around his feet as Obi-Wan straightens and drops his shoulders a moment to address his opponent, weary sorrow spilling into each word. "It's over Anakin, I have the high ground."

Anakin's eyes flash as bright and furious as the lava flow that surrounds them, his lips curled into a smirk that is all too familiar, and terrible. "You underestimate my power!"

Obi-Wan swallows bile. They'd underestimated his rage. Anakin had always been quick to anger, had always struggled with the depth of his feelings, but. . . But the waves of fury bombarding him through the Force churn his stomach and fill his eyes with tears. It's nearly more than he can handle and it is merely an echo of what Anakin feels. He didn't know.

_ I didn't know. _

Obi-Wan's heart contracts as he watches Anakin launch into the sky and he prepares to strike down his closest friend, positions his blade to kill his brother. He feels something tug on his shoulder as he raises the saber, grunts as it breaks his concentration and he sees the bright blue of Anakin's blade draw near. Obi-Wan twists to avoid it and stumbles. Ash puffs up again, a bigger cloud, assailing his face as he tucks his body into a crouch, rolls off the ground and stands again at the ready, blade in hand, pointed toward the Sith-

Wide brown eyes blink back at him. 

Brown?

The young man standing in front of him resembles Anakin in height and build, and his bearing is just as untamed. Even his Force signature is similar - but his eyes and hair are dark, his pallor pale, untouched by Tatooine's suns, and he's not armed. The ash and lava are also gone, replaced by a silent nothingness. 

". . . What?"

The stranger's eyes flicker at the word, drop to Obi-Wan's weapon and back.

Slowly, the Jedi Master lowers it, deactivates the blade and returns it to his belt loop. His other hand remains outstretched toward the young man. "Where am I?"

The stranger clears his throat. "It's described as a liminal space."

"Described?"

He raises his arm, his hand clutched around an ancient tome. Obi-Wan recognizes the book immediately, though he'd only ever seen it behind glass. 

"Where did you get that?" The Jedi texts were never taken outside the temple, not even the library - though both were destroyed, he remembers solemnly.

"My ...master has a collection."

Obi-Wan's eyes narrow. The attack on the Jedi temple had occurred barely a day prior, it seemed unlikely that anyone would have time to scavenge the site, authorized or not. And the stranger had hesitated over the word 'master'. He was hiding something.

"I only have this one."

Obi-Wan turns his hand, raising his palm, and after a moment the man passes him the book. He opens it slowly, carefully, with reverence, and starts to skim.

'Liminal space' the young man had said. Between worlds. Obi-Wan's senses tingle with cloudy memories of falling between space once before. Space _and time_. His finger brushes a word: Mortis. Flashes of memory come back to him, but it's like trying to remember a dream after he's opened his eyes.

There is a map in the book, and a drawing, stylized portraits, like the glass windows on Naboo. Three figures are depicted, one old, two young. They don't match his vague memory, but they bear a resemblance nonetheless. Much like the strange young man before him bears a resemblance to Anakin. . . Obi-Wan gently turns the pages until he finds a passage marked Chosen. Obi-Wan remembers the first time he read it, a few months after he'd become Qui-Gon's padawan learner. His master had explained the language was so old no one spoke it anymore, only scholars could read the texts without translation and they often argued. He'd meant to read it again after Mortis, but he'd been distracted with the war. 

"You're Ben Kenobi." 

Obi-Wan looks up sharply. ". . .Ben. . ." The stranger watches him with soulful eyes. They seem familiar, too. Obi-Wan shakes his head. "I haven't heard that name in a long time." Not since Satine. . . "A long time."

He looks at the book again, at the portrait. He feels the young man watching still. There's a heaviness in the air, in the space between and around them, and the Force itself.

"Are you one of them?" Obi-Wan raises his eyes to meet the other's. "Are you the Son?" 

The young man blinks. "Whose son?"

A silence grows between them. Obi-Wan frowns, considers the pieces of the riddle. The strange otherworld he's been transported to. The persistent feelings of recognition. The book of legends. The pull of the Force. The familiar eyes. The hesitation.

"Oh!" His eyes widen at the sudden conclusion. "Are you Anakin's son?"

The man purses his lips, his eyes - _ Padmé' _ s eyes - flicker wildly - _ Anakin' _s energy - and Obi-Wan chokes down a sob to see it. Ben takes a sharp breath.

"I'm his daughter's son."

"His. . ." Obi-Wan's chest tightens. It's confirmation but also complication. "Oh my." 

A daughter. Anakin and Padmé have a daughter. The image of a tiny brunette dressed in blue and surrounded by flowers appears without warning in his mind's eye. He pictures her running, fast, too fast, like her father. At the thought a vision of Anakin pops into the imagining, his arms wide, his grin wider as the girl tumbles into them.

But that's a fantasy. Anakin is a Jedi, the Chosen One. . .

No, that's a fantasy, too. 

The image of his apprentice and the little girl blurs and is replaced by visions of lava raining and Padmé choking, of Anakin cutting down younglings, and it becomes suddenly unbearably hot and hard to breathe. 

"I need to go back. . ." At the words the nothingness shimmers. Obi-Wan reaches towards it, peers into the dark, looking for a way out. "You have to send me back. Vader. . . I . . ." 

"You were sent to kill him." Ben's voice is flat but there is hurt, blame, in his eyes. Padmé's eyes. Obi-Wan looks away.

". . .Yes."

"You fail." His voice is still flat, but it is an accusation. A truth. And Obi-Wan's greatest fear.

_I will do what I must._ He'd given into his anger, his fear. Used Padmé, attacked Anakin, destroyed his best friend, his family. He had become a monster, too. 

To do all that and fail. . . 

"What?" He is not sure what he is asking for. No answer will bring absolution. 

"The Empire wins, the fighting continues for years. You Jedi are in hiding until. . ." he breaks off in frustration. A familiar frustration.

Obi-Wan raises his eyes, looks at the young man, part Anakin, part Padmé - and some part unknown. But part Jedi, or at least something resembling a Jedi. He has the book, his master has more of them. Something survived, even under the Empire. 

The almost-Jedi seems to be Anakin's age - the age Anakin is now, or the now he'd left. What's that, fifty years? Obi-Wan wonders how he was raised. By this master or by his mother? Anakin wouldn't have let the Jedi take him from his family - but Anakin wasn't Anakin anymore. Or. . . what _ had _ happened to Anakin? What had happened to any of them? Why had this boy interrupted his death blow? Why was he here? Obi-Wan catches his breath. 

"Are you here to stop it, to stop the Empire before. . ."

A terrible fury flashes across the young man's face. He briefly looks like a demon, beautiful and terrible and inhuman. Like a Sith. Like Vader. 

But it passes just as swiftly as it comes leaving anguish instead.

"No. No the Rebels win."

"Rebels?"

"The rebels in the senate and the Jedi in hiding," he explains, repeating a story oft told, but it lacks fondness. "And the - the -" he stumbles, still hiding something, some pain. "They killed the Emperor."

"Whom?"

"Emperor Palpatine."

Obi-Wan shakes his head. "No, who killed him?"

"Skywalker." He speaks the name like a curse. Perhaps it is one.

". . .Your mother," the Jedi posits. 

"No, she-" His eyes are wild again. "Yes, she was there but she didn't- she wasn't on the Death Star."

"The ...Death...Star…?" he repeats, eyebrows raised in disturbed query. The younger man glares. 

"A lot happened after you decided to-" he stops, waves a hand in annoyance. Disgust.

"What?"

He gets no response.

"What did I do?" Obi-Wan frowns. _What did I do to you?_

The young man spits his answer, "It's not important."

An uncomfortable silence grows. Obi-Wan strokes his chin. 

"Who killed the Emperor?"

Ben takes a deep breath. "Vader."

Obi-Wan's mouth drops open, he feels tears in his eyes, in his throat.

Skywalker.

_ Anakin. _

Some part of the man, the boy he knew, taught, raised - some part survived, returned. One glimmer of hope exists...it pounds in his chest, stronger than any heartbeat. 

But oh the sorrow.

"You're not how I expected you to be." The youngest Skywalker's voice pulls Obi-Wan back from his musings.

"How so?"

Ben purses his lips. 

Luke called his old master wise. But there was more he didn't say, something else, something that lived behind his eyes but his master never explained.

Leia idealized the General the way she did her father, who she called her real father, Bail Organa, and all the old guard of the Republic. She'd grown up surrounded by the memories of more just times, true or not. Kenobi was a symbol. A hero.

Han told him of a crazy old man, who spoke in riddles and dragged them into trouble. But he did so with fondness and respect.

To Ben Obi-Wan was a legacy he could never live up to, like his parents, and his uncle, and everyone Ben knew, everyone who mattered. Everyone who mattered the way he didn't. The way he feared he couldn't. Now Vader's shadow loomed larger than them all. He'd wanted to speak with him, that's why he'd grabbed the book, why he'd come, but it was the wrong moment and he'd gotten his namesake instead. 

Ben shakes his head, clearing it of ghosts.

"You're. . ." Weak, he thinks. "Small," he says. "And . . . sad. I think I knew you should be sad but they never said it."

Another silence grows. Not as uncomfortable. Kind, almost. 

Obi-Wan opens his mouth to speak but the air shifts, grows suddenly warmer, and an angry shout cuts through the quiet.

"...underestimate my power!"

A portal appears on the last word. Through the haze he can see Anakin gathering his strength to launch himself into the air. His skin tingles. 

"You can't change what happens." Ben reaches out and pulls the Jedi text out of Obi-Wan's hands. He realizes the young man is unsurprised. This is expected. "This place is just an echo. The book says Jedi can access its secrets through meditation and sometimes-"

"Dreams," Obi-Wan whispers, a sudden, bright and horrible realization.

Ben nods. "But time doesn't change. It just becomes more true."

"...my power!" Anakin's voice surrounds them again, louder this time, closer.

Obi-Wan flinches, then feels a tug, pulling him back toward reality.

"Wait!" He reaches for Anakin's grandson, their legacy. "What's your name?"

The young man sets his jaw and in that moment he looks nothing like Anakin, or Padmé, or anyone Obi-Wan knows. He looks weary, but confident - like that bloody pirate, Ohnaka. Like a scoundrel.

"Ben," he answers, and Obi-Wan's eyes flash as he disappears into the door between worlds. Fire burns in the vision but Ben turns his back on it. He drops the book and it pops into nothingness as he walks away, head held high with confidence he doesn't feel but is determined to show. He doesn't look back. 

The past must die.


End file.
